


The (Ex)Criminal's Guide to Being Well-Adjusted

by AnonAlpaca



Series: Archie and Maxie's Guides [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire | Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Versions
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comedy, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Relationships, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Recovery, References to Depression, Small Towns, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonAlpaca/pseuds/AnonAlpaca
Summary: After Team Magma and Aqua made the biggest mistake of their lives, they might've asked for some peace and quiet. Instead, Courtney, Shelly, Tabitha, Matt, Maxie and Archie were chased out of Hoenn by the International Police.They've put aside their differences, they've even become friends again, but...that wouldn't stop them from getting caught in the crossfire of bickering agents. It wouldn't stop them from seeing sirens behind their backs. And it wouldn't stop them from losing their getaway vehicle, getting lost in the Sinnohan wilderness in the dead of night, and almost being buried in a winter storm.But things changed for them. A stranger ended up rescuing and taking them back to Celestic Town, where they are today. The town welcomed them as they would anyone, but...Maxie and Archie are well aware they aren't just anyone.What are they supposed to do now that 5 years of their life at war amounted to nothing? What are you supposed to do with a friendship based on strange and awful circumstances? And more importantly - how are they supposed to find what led them down that path in the first place?As it turns out, being on the run doesn't build one's character.
Relationships: Aogiri | Archie/Matsubusa | Maxie, Homura | Tabitha/Ushio | Matt, Izumi | Shelly/Kagari | Courtney
Series: Archie and Maxie's Guides [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2059107
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	The (Ex)Criminal's Guide to Being Well-Adjusted

**Author's Note:**

> Just letting you know, this is a sequel to the events of A Criminal's Guide to Regionhopping! However, I have tried to write it so you can go right into it without reading the first fic, and believe me; it is pretty long. If there's any scenes or arcs that hinge on the events of that fic, I'll try to establish that beforehand.  
> If there's anything that needs clarifying, please comment about it and I'll be happy to provide an explanation! (ofc i would reccomend the og fic if you like angst and action movies but don't tell anyone i said that shdkj)

October 22nd, 202X   
  
For the first time in a month the once Great Maxie woke up alone.

The imagined shrill of an alarm clock disappeared into a disgusting hum of fluorescent lights above his head in the place of humming tyres, total radio silence - the linoleum floor and the borrowed bed the same unstable level of stable they’d been when he slept. The Nurse Joys were asleep and unaware.   
To wake up in the same place twice in a row constituted -   
  
The once Great Maxie ran through the hypothetical script he had dreamt up at midnight, hid under the duvets, and waited for the PokeCenter to forget he’d woken up.   
_ It is over. _ _   
_ _ It is done. _ _   
_ _ You agreed you would stop running. _ _   
  
_

* * *

  
October 27th, 202X   
  
For the seventh time in a month and a bit, Archie woke up completely alone.   
  
It pounced on him like an alarm clock, despite the fact he...still didn’t have one. (Despite having a phone. Despite having many, many good reasons to still need one.) In fact it wasn’t like an alarm clock at all, except for how he was breathing hard again and with a familiar late-to-school variety of butterflies in his stomach. More just instinct.   
  
He’d found a mattress in the room of his flat when he walked in. His flatmate had a bit of foresight. So he sat it down on the floor and there he’d slept, and slept again.    
At one point he thought of dragging his backpack from across the barren room and laying it on top so the mattress didn’t feel so - big, in comparison to the nice back-of-the-van setup he had before. Did he like sleeping so close to other people? Maybe so. Anyone would. Everyone else probably appreciated it more than he did. (Ha!)   
The backpack still lay dusty on the other side of the room.   
  
So Archie sat up against the bare wall and stretched. Something popped. (Ah, sleeping in a van for a month  _ really _ gave you a crick in the neck!) The Mightyena sleeping by his bed stirred and lumbered over to him, kneading its paws into Archie’s chest as he reached for some actual clothes. There were goosebumps on his arms; so either the heating in here was poor or he was just a coward.   
Well, then, time to ask the million-dollar-question: what was there he had to do that meant he couldn’t just crawl back into bed and sleep instead?   
  
First of all, to even know that he had to find a room with a clock. Very, very quietly, telling his Mightyena to shush, he opened the door and wandered into the corridor. (He could hear somebody snoring.)   
The living room was about...two people wide, and the kitchen only one. It was a struggle not to tread on a creaky floorboard that never needed fixing, or a sleeping Furret on the cushions that was, were, and always would be on the floor.

  
In the corner of the living room, by the one frosty window, there was an old computer he hadn’t seen since Devon days - a shared one. He turned it on, hoped the chime it made wouldn’t wake the pets. And for the first time since he’d been moved in - Archie had mail.   
(It was around 11 in the morning when he’d woken up. The bar was incredibly low, but he sure had slipped under it.)   
  
Say someone looked into the flat right about then, with very strong binoculars and a good head on their shoulders, and...cursory knowledge of what Archie had done. It wouldn’t be hard to see his timetable through the frosty glass. His flatmate Alistair was nocturnal, a night-shift Nurse Joy, and he was a supposedly normal daytime man who wished the nocturnal one a good night’s sleep. To be seen, not heard.   
Archie imagined that’s how squatters might operate.    
  


And -    
And this one had video calls to make. And read his emails at the same time.   
His BuzzNav began to buzz, buzz, buzz on the stack of paperwork - so he propped it up against the monitor, pressed the little green button, turned his chair around, and said - 

* * *

  
“Goooood morning, everyone,” Archie declared with a news reporter flair, swivelling around in the desk chair with a confident tilt of the head, “How’s everybody feeling?”   
“Good day to you,” Maxie mimicked - delighted, though his smile was a little bit littler than he’d have liked it to be. (The bandages were still very thick.)   
“Matt? Shelly?...They’re still moving, aren’t they - “   
“I’ve been meaning to ask them where to,” Archie muttered.   
Tabitha grumbled, holding Courtney’s Poketch away from his face. He hadn’t much space or decent lighting, on the bottom bunk of a sweaty hostel bunk bed - and he hadn’t the nerve to tell his bunkmates to quiet down, either.   
“I’m meeting up with Matt around twelve-thirty,” he explained, as Courtney snatched her property back, “but yeah, they’ve got a lot going on...”    
“Lucky bastards,” she added, “he still doesn’t have a Poketch, by the way.”   
“Courtney, we’re on  _ welfare _ .”

  
“Well, you’ve got Matt’s number, haven’t you?” Maxie tried to advise them both, “Archie?”   
“Oh, yeah, yeah! It’s 04 - ”   
“Honestly, Shelly says Marti might pay for a new one,” Courtney continued, lying down in the bed, “If you chase him up.”   
“Nahhh, don’t do that,” Archie mumbled -    
Tabitha sucked air through his teeth - “He  _ did _ run it over.”   
“And practically speaking, it would kill two birds with one stone - a new phone. Bought with someone else’s money. It would be  _ untraceable _ ,” Maxie advised, seeing Archie’s very sharp eyebrow raise, “but of course, morally speaking - ”   
“So, morally speaking,” said Tabitha, “ _ he _ ran it over…”   
“My flatmate’s asleep,” Archie whispered to them, “ _ shush _ !”   
“Oh - “   
“Yes, of course. Naturally.”   
“Turn your volume down, then.”   
  
“Sooo,” Archie wondered, trying to fill in the conversation, “Matt and Shelly are moving, you’re both waiting for a flatmate - what’ve you all been doing?”   
“Bureaucracy,” Tabitha groaned.   
“I thought you liked bureaucracy,” said Maxie.   
“Not this breed, I don’t.”   
“Oh,” said Courtney, with what could only be described as a shit-eating grin, “I’ve been talking with the hikers that come through here. They’re, uh...really interesting people.”   
Tabitha nodded, and he did not have a similar grin.   
“Fun,” Archie commented, “And, uh...Max, what about you? Is the frostbite healing okay?...”   
  
“Well, it is - going,” Maxie described, as he tried to wave away a figure beside his bed without moving his hand too much, “talking is easier, my fingers and feet and face are not in... _ constant _ pain. My doctor’s fairly sure they won’t have to chop my nose off,” he finished, laughing, “In fact, they’re giving me about two-to-three weeks until I could, ah, leave -    
“Ohhh,” Archie replied, “that’s amazing!”   
“Ethel, would you mind waiting on lunch?”    
...He waited for a moment while his carer wheeled the tray of soup back out.   
“What was I talking about?...”   
(Archie rarely saw her, and he guessed that was on purpose.)   
  
“And - look at her. She still doesn’t suspect a thing, despite...you know, being around me every second of the day,” he rambled, quietly, “but out of all the people in Sinnoh, you’d expect at least one to watch the news, wouldn’t you? Either that or - they’re too polite to  _ say _ . It’s ridiculous.”    
Maxie went quiet for a moment; a small break for Archie to say  _ it was what it was _ if he felt so inclined or - something like that.   
He didn’t.   
“Though it’s perhaps because my face has certainly looked...better,” he continued, pulling away the bandages on his cheek and nose to reveal a hint of blister, “I look less like me and rather like - oh, what’s the  _ Sawsbuck _ from the song - “   
“No,” Tabitha butted in, cringing, “Maxie,  _ don’t _ . You look fine.“   
“Rudolph,” Archie replied, tapping the side of his head.   
“ _ That’s _ the one.”   
  
(Courtney had checked out.)   
“And...you, Archie?” Maxie wondered.   
Archie blinked.   
“Oh - oh, right! What... _ I’m _ doing. Well,” he replied, leaning back in his chair and bringing up an email on his computer, “you all remember Carolina, obviously.  _ I _ am being invited by the mayor for coffee at twelve. I’ve told her I want to branch out, make connections - get a  _ job _ , but you don’t care about that,“ Archie said in a murmur, “basically, make friends.”   
Maxie tilted his head - “But isn’t it half past eleven?”   
...Archie opened his mouth, and nothing came out.

“Exactly,” he finally said with a wink to the camera, “wish me luck.”   
  


* * *

  
Celestic Town was, if anyone asked Archie, probably the most beautiful place a drifter could’ve asked to wash up. The sun rose only at eleven in the morning, and if you lived in the lower layers of this hole in the ground that turned into a town, it wouldn’t ‘rise’ ‘till it peeked over the rocky walls. (Archie was one of them.) Until then, you relied on the antique, golden-light lanterns that littered each stair and ramp to lead you where you needed to go.  
  
You had to concentrate, too, else you’d slip on some rouge ice. The locals didn’t have much trouble with it - Alistair told him he’d find his feet in time. And the few people that lived here had lived here for so long, directions were given by landmarks instead. Right when you saw the doctor’s office, straight on from the post office, across the road from the charity shop, et cetera, et cetera... That’s what Carolina said to him.   
  
So he arrived at the Mountain Bakery ten minutes late, in enough layers to kill a man in Hoenn. And by then he was finally convinced that if anyone he really, really trusted asked him, he would’ve said this was one of the worst possible places he could’ve asked to wash up.   
(Carolina was not one of them.)  
  
When he left, he was no wiser as to how he was supposed to fit in here, but on the bright side he did have a backpack full of miscellaneous things that Carolina openly admitted she could’ve carried. (Ah, he liked her for that. No pretending.) It took him a little bit to regain his balance on the slippery ground - they both laughed - and he walked away down the main street as the sun began to rise. Confidence, that was the key to -   
  
“Archieee!” cried a voice from down the road, “Old pal!” Archie turned around and saw the postmaster just in time before they clapped him on the back - hard.   
“ _Lennox_!” Archie retorted, “...pal!”  
In a sense - he did have a headstart on the ‘getting to know people’ front. At least twenty people had shown up to nurse him and the other five runaways back to health when they showed up here last week. Of course he’d run into at least one. This was one of them, a tall freckle-faced man with orange sideburns and a postie’s cap.  
“What’ve you got there?” Lennox wondered, motioning towards the backpack.  
“Oh, this? I’m, uh...just delivering a few things for Carolina,” Archie explained, trying to be jolly, “Not like I’ve got much else to do today, so I thought, may as well…”  
“Ahh,” Lennox nodded, “it’s a slow day for me too.”  
“I can imagine…” (He couldn’t.)  
  
“I’ll take some of that, then - “ they told him bluntly, reaching for Archie’s backpack -  
“I mean, thanks for the offer, but this is so I can...you know,” Archie muttered, turning around and walking backwards, “get to know people, make connections - “  
 _Of course,_ he already argued with himself, _you could just go to a pub. It’d be easier._  
“Get a job?”  
“I see, I see.”  
Lennox nodded politely and wandered off in the vague direction of the Uxie’s Tail pub, while Archie kept trudging away, down the main street. _Connections, yes_ , he continued debating one-sidedly, _that’s what he needed._ It was a nice word, a therapy word.  
“You know,” Lennox added when he was almost out of earshot, pointing back at the post office and...suddenly quite subdued, “I just had to let someone go last week.”   
_But Lennox wasn’t supposed to know that._  
  
“Yeesh,” Archie commented loudly, sucking in air through his teeth and backing down the icy stairs at the end of the street, “that sounds really unfortunate!”   
And then, as soon as he was sure Lennox couldn’t see him - he ran.  
  


(Seriously, what  _ was _ it about him that made people get like this?)   
  


* * *

  
  
It...seemed like the best thing to point out at the time - the  _ time. _   
Tabitha offered to come visit him there today or tomorrow after Archie left the call in such a hurry, chipper and excited - before of course, he was the one to hang up. He was not explicitly in a hurry like Archie was, but he was surely a busy man.

(Today or tomorrow - he’d prefer it if they just said tomorrow.) 

  
“Aidino,” he ordered directly to his tablet, “shut down.” The sickly-sweet AI voice complied.

So, Maxie looked at the reflection on the black screen for a while, a spare one dug out of the back of the PokeCenter and a tiny bit dusty still. He’d been absentmindedly stroking his hand for a while, or rather just the bandages. It felt alright. _And now you can have some food, so call Ethel back,_ he tried ordering himself, _if you don’t, she’s going to come in and get worried again - and you’ll be hungry and embarrassed._   
Needless to say, that didn’t work.   
  
Besides, he had the distinct feeling someone was watching him.  
When the curtains around his bed were pulled back, he sometimes saw children pop into the PokeCenter’s back rooms for a rest. This one was staring at him.  
“What?” he said.  
The child tried to pretend they weren’t looking.   
“What is it?” he repeated, a little softer this time.  
They waved. The kid had a green duffel coat on, and Pokeballs popping out of every pocket.  
“Are you on a… _’Pokemon journey,’_ ” Maxie asked, “perchance?”  
“Yeah, yeah - ”  
They sat down on the bed across the room, with a quiet creak.  
“... _Whoa,_ uh,” they whispered, “What happened to you?”  
  
Maxie felt his heart skip or rather - trip.  
“Well - do you want the long or the short version?”  
“Eh. Long version.”  
 _Well, he couldn’t exactly back out now._  
So Maxie took a deep breath - and he began.  
  
“A long, long time ago, I ran away from home,” he explained, with the kid nodding along, “because I...wanted something new. Yes, I wanted to see the world.”  
“Hey, me too!” (Maxie felt a twinge of guilt.)  
“You know,” he continued, “where I came from, there was no such thing as winter.”  
“What’s _that_ like?”  
“Very damp.”

  
No, where he came from, there was no Midwinter festival, but a New Year’s Day or even a New Year’s Week. It was timed by the stars and signalled by hundreds of thousands of artificial stars, candles drifting down the river deltas and into the waves, where people danced on rafts of wood and whoops of another language echoed.

(Would they talk about the Magma Leader Maxie’s crimes in the new year’s retrospectives? Would six families take a moment to mention someone that couldn’t attend?)   
  
“Ew,” said the kid, kicking the bed.   
“But of course, eventually I came here. All the way to the slopes of Mt. Coronet. And then - “   
_ Steady, Maxie.  _   
“I was chased off the path by a pack of - territorial  _ Garchomp _ , all red and blue with sharp teeth! Fast as a jet plane,” he explained, as his voice began to hiss and turn sharp, “I had to hide in the snow so they couldn’t see me.”   
(It felt so good to call them this now and again. Wild thing and wild thing instead of judge and the criminal. Because, you see, a Garchomp wouldn’t feel anything more nuanced than - hate, absolute  _ hate _ , when the competition in its niche twitches under its talon.)   
  
“Then the north wind kicked up, a blizzard started blowing,” he continued, “the Garchomp got lost, and - and before I knew it, so was I.”   
The kid pushed one Pokeball behind them, trying to hide it.   
“...I’ve got a Gabite,” they admitted.   
Maxie’s face softened at once.   
“Oh, no, no, the  _ Garchomp _ wasn’t what did me in,” he corrected, shaking his head, “and besides, it was partially my fault, but - do you know what did? It’s very silly.”   
“...What?”   
  
“Wet socks,” Maxie whispered, seeing the kid break into a small smile as he did so, “Really. By the time someone... _ rescued _ me - why, I almost turned into an ice sculpture,” he described, freezing in place to illustrate, “The nurses had to cover me in hot towels and blankets so I’d defrost. And - and that is why,” he finished, seeing his listener getting ready to head off, “you must never, ever,  _ ever _ go outside in clothes that aren’t dry or you’ll end up like me.”   
“That’s a  _ weird _ story,” the kid commented, clicking their fingers so their Buizel would hop on their shoulder and setting the sheets on their bed back in place, “It’s cool, though.”   
“Indeed it is.”   
“Well...bye, then? Nice to meet you, uh - mister. Hope you get better.” The Buizel whipped its tails impatiently.   
_ Ah. _   
  
“Of course,” said Maxie, waving them off, “don’t let me stop you. I’ve never gone on a proper journey anyhow, and there are probably scarier things out there than…”   
“Frostbite?”   
Maxie opened his mouth to say something, but the kid had gotten to it first, so he only nodded kindly (if one could nod kindly) - as the kid in the green duffle coat rounded the corner...and disappeared for good.   
  
(There were probably scarier things out there than him.)   
  


* * *

“Yep. That’s why I’ve been staying here a whole week,” Courtney was explaining, sat up on the top bunk and overlooking her hostel kingdom, “I’m preparing...for Mt. Coronet.”

“Man,” said some backpacker sitting below, “I thought you didn’t have anywhere to go.”   
“Nope. That’s exactly what I’m  _ not _ doing.”   
Meanwhile, Courtney and Tabitha were stuck in the same room for a different reason entirely - paperwork. The Boulderroll Hostel, on the edge of Celestic Town, was their temporary home while they found someone willing to take in two strange, washed-up flatmates, and they registered for welfare over the crackling phones.    
“What’re you aiming for?” a hiker wondered, “Base Camp?...Diamond Glacier?...The Stairs?”   
“Yeah, oxygen tanks are, uh - a bitch to get ahold of unless you go somewhere specialised.”   
“Uuuuuuh-huh,” said she.

  
To Tabitha it felt like a roll of the dice that Shelly and Matt got to leave first; to Courtney, well, she...genuinely didn’t care. True, she helped Tabitha find a shiny new fake surname. She looked up when the Work and Income offices opened and shut. Nothing more, nothing less. But when he was gone?    
“The Stairs? They’re for wimps.”   
She had nothing else to do but make her own fun.

  
“Baby, I’m aiming for the  _ summit _ .”   
The hikers were all affronted - not the bad type of affronted - concerned, horrified for her safety,  _ certainly _ not, but the good kind of affronted. The nice kind of affronted where none of them were willing to be the one to correct the girl first.   
“Weeeell,” said the hiker in the  _ thing _ that looked like a safety vest, “that’s...impressive, for you. I mean, none of us have ever pulled off a summit climb in winter, right?”   
“Oh, yeah, no! Too much for me.”   
“People  _ died _ .”   
“Wimps,” said the backpacker.

  
(Tabitha wandered back into dorm room number four, toothbrush still in his mouth to find Courtney perched on his bed, looking down at a crowd of gruff middle-aged men. As soon as she noticed the one less gruff middle-aged man come in - her eyes widened.)   
“You’d need a guide,” said one, sitting on the ground and counting off his fingers, “at least 4 oxygen tanks, a full team of 6 Pokemon to fend off anything territorial, obviously…”   
“Actually,” Courtney mumbled, as Tabitha halfway climbed the bunk bed ladder, “I’ll just need fifty Ultra Balls, so I’m waiting for the, uh. Bulk shipment to come in the mai....oh, Tabitha.”   
“I’m going,” he whispered, “what’s going on?”   
“Mountain stuff.”   
“Are they...you know, being weird?”   
“Listen,” Courtney murmured, “they just wanted me to tell ‘em why I was staying here so long, so I did. S’ not like these people are ever gonna see me again and ask if I actually  _ climbed _ the thing, and...if I’m lucky I won’t come back.”   
  
Tabitha thought for a moment, listening to the sweet sound of arguing hikers.   
“Ahhhhh,” he finally sighed, grinning from ear to ear, “I see. Tell people enough shaggy-dog stories about yourself, they’ll never know the real one.”   
“...What?”    
Tabitha tapped the side of his nose. “Like the boy who cried - “   
“Man - just go see Matt.”   
So as soon as she’d gently nudged Tabitha off the ladder, and he quietly picked his way through all his other bunk-mate...she wiped the confused squint off of her face and turned back to her unfortunate audience.    
  
“Basically,” she said, “I’m gonna go catch Arceus.”   
  


* * *

Completely oblivious and on the other side of town - Tabitha and Matt were following a trail of lanterns through the little valley of pebble roads, rickety flats, and fog. Their destination; the closest and...probably  _ only _ furniture store in the area. When he’d sent their website to Matt - it had hopped right out of the 90s, Volkov’s Furnishings in bolded text, marble print background and all. (He absolutely hated it, they loved it.) 

  
“Hey, thanks for comin’ out here with me, bro,” Matt commented out of the blow, sticking close to Tabitha to shield him from the tiny bit of wind, “I thought you’d wanna spend your time trying to...you know, scout for flatmates.”   
“Well - thank  _ you _ for asking.”   
“Aye, I mean for one,” they explained, counting on their fingers until he noticed mittens didn’t work like that, “my back still hasn’t recovered from a month of sleeping in a van; you’re  _ strong _ \- “   
Tabitha snickered and harrumphed at once - but how that was possible, Matt didn’t know.    
“ _ Plus, _ you’re also pretty good at interior design?”   
“Huh-whuh?” And he was doing it again.   
“I’ve seen the Magma base,” Matt whispered to him - though he had to lean down, “it’s kinda cool.  _ Was _ cool, I mean.”    
Tabitha squinted - “Mate, you don’t have to whisper. It’s fine.”    
  
“Ah. Ahhh,  _ yeah _ , I get what you mean,” Matt sighed, nodding sagely and straightening back up, “don’t be embarrassed by your past, and...all that. I’ve been trying to be more positive about it. Yeah - “ he repeated, bright as ever, “the Magma base was cool!” His voice boomed and echoed off the sheer rocky walls on all sides, and a Starly flew out of a tree.   
“Oh, no, I  _ am _ embarrassed by the Magma base.”   
“Don’t be, then.”   
“In fairness,” Tabitha explained, kicking the snow underfoot a little way into the air, “I’m not an interior designer, I - am an  _ engineer. _ As in, I got a degree in it. That being said, I mean - tubes of magma. Magma. Within reaching distance of walkways and - and just  _ one _ blow of the wind away from catching the banners on fire, I’m surprised the whole place didn’t burn down.”   
“Eh. Maxie wanted it, not you,” Matt suggested, shrugging -    
“You reckon I could say that to a  _ lawyer _ ?”   
“...Fair.”   
  
“His words, his  _ exact _ words were,” he snapped, switching to a posh accent, “ _ ‘safety regulations don’t apply to us, they’re a governmental construct.’ _ And he wouldn’t even call them magma tubes, they were lava tubes - ” Tabitha sighed, while Matt rubbed his back in neat little circles ‘till he calmed down, “Did you know that?”   
“I did not.”   
“Well, there you go.”   
  
“If it makes you feel better...” Matt decided, a tiny bit deflated, “after I get the groceries, we’ve got a budget of...two thousand Pokedollars. We can’t do  _ that _ much damage.”

“Come on,” he finished, dragging him along to a flight of stony stairs in the hill and giving him a firm pat on the shoulder, “store’s this way.” (At the top of them, a backpacked man in enough layers to probably kill someone in Hoenn disappeared into the fog.)   
  
“Oh, we’ll be fine. I mean with that sort of limitation,” Tabitha pointed out, “you’ve got to rely on - composition, feng shui to make the room look full. You can’t go wrong there.”   
“Huh?...”   
“What?”

* * *

“We’ll have to make the place look full somehow,” Annie commented, putting down her dustpan and brush, “If there’s people coming around.”   
“Did I say that?”   
“You mentioned having a couple of friends…”   
Shelly and Matt - lucky bastards, said Tabitha - well, they’d gotten picked by schoolteacher Annie Kidd, in her highish-rise flat pressed up against a rock wall. They’d both slept on a bare mattress late the night before, while the floors still looked pale and dusty where someone’s furniture had once been.    
...It was surprising how fast Shelly got used to someone breathing right beside her as she slept rough. She had learned to recognise the faint huffing and puffing of someone having a stress dream, in the back of the van. (Sometimes she wondered if anyone had recognised it in her.)

But it had been - quiet. Annie spoke like she was allergic to panic.

  
“Are you sure you don’t want to go with, uh - Matt?” Annie asked graciously, taking the broom out of her hands, “I can handle most of this.”   
“Yep,” Shelly told her, stretching her arms, “I think I just...need a break.” She parked herself on the plush couch in front of a blank TV, and the temptation of something nice to turn her brain off didn’t quite outweigh the fact her brain was already turned off.   
“Long week?”   
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe.”   
At that, Anne parked herself right beside her flatmate and let the broomstick clatter to the wall. She took the remote and switched to the news, quiet enough that it was just white noise.   
“So, uh,” she wondered, “if you don’t mind me asking, what made you come here?...It’s pretty rare for people to want to move in from anywhere else.”   
  
Shelly’s heart skipped.    
_ Oh, finally. _   
“Ah, it’s…”    
Honestly, how little she cared right now for a fake story was immeasurable.    
“Do you want the long version or the short version?”   
“Long version?” Annie practically started vibrating.   
“Promise not to just tell random people about this?” she snickered.   
Who else would she tell this to? Archie? He’d already heard it a thousand times and lived it, and  _ ‘made peace with it,’  _ apparently. (There wouldn’t be any convincing him otherwise.)   
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” And so, with the same energy as a grizzled sailor drinking a glass of whisky...Shelly downed a stray glass of water on the coffee table, and began.   
  
“Well, in terms of where my life started going  _ downhill _ ,” she described in a drawl, “I would pin that on this really big...corporation I started working at. Not quite tech company, not quite energy company, but they were making PokeNavs, Pokeballs,  _ submarines _ \- “   
“Monopoly.”   
“Yeah, you got it. They had me working as a Pokemon behaviorist,” she sighed, feeling a wry grin crawl across her face, “back in the day where the law started saying you had to have at least three, if you were performing... _ tests _ .”   
The grin turned into a laugh.   
  
“They, uh... _ paid _ me. They gave me lots of things to do; not a lot of  _ work _ . They’d throw me a Pokemon every now and then. But then, a couple years later, when I was happy there, they gave me some of the  _ actual _ test subjects and…I was  _ not _ .”   
She took a long drink.   
“I  _ may _ have quit before they could fire me.”   
She could tell, Annie found this very idea scandalous.   
“I  _ may _ have leaked some...compromising stuff when I did.”   
“You  _ did _ , didn’t you?”   
“I - yeah? And after that point, I was having  _ real _ trouble getting hired by anyone.“   
“Oh,” Annie gasped, “oh, that’s terrible. And that’s why you ended up here?...“   
“No, not yet,” Shelly told her firmly, clicking her tongue, “A, uh...old friend of mine, saw how things had gone with me. ...Suddenly, he had this great idea. As in, save the world from the people who just - no, not fired me. Sorry.”   
_ Steady, Shelly. _   
“I mean, I cut myself slack now. I was pissed off.”   
  
“Oh,” Annie muttered, “I know where this is going. Pyramid scheme, right?”   
“Well, nah. More of an environmentalist's group. It just grew way out of proportion really quickly, the higher-ups started...losing it a bit. First it was that company, then it was the league too, then it was straight-up every institution in the region, and then it was - “   
She was beginning to see why Annie looked so proud of herself, but never mind.   
“Clearly too much for just six people to handle. And the whole thing - fractured.”   
(What exactly would Annie do with all this? Help?)   
“But then...said friend kept going.”   
Shelly didn’t, though. The woman already had financial ruin and homelessness on the brain, and so she finished the glass of water and sank into the couch.   
  
“Arceus almighty,” Annie muttered under her breath, looking at Shelly with fresh eyes and perfect understanding, “I - so - were you all on the  _ run  _ or something?...”   
Shelly slowly turned her head, squinting.   
“You’re  _ really _ into this, aren’t you.”   
  
“Oh, no, no, I’m just being - “   
“I get it,” Shelly reassured her, physically hearing the woman backpedal, “I get it.”   
“I mean,” Annie continued, holding her hands up in the air, “the only reason I’m here is, uh...crippling debt. That’s all of my story. Just saying.” Shelly put on her best poker face. The urge for her to laugh the story off was immeasurable.   
“I wish I had crippling debt,” she muttered, prising herself off the couch and wandering over to the kitchen, “you know, instead.”   
“Oh, no you  _ don’t _ .”   
“Tell me about it, then…”   
(She was going to need a drink.)   
  


* * *

  
“Ding-dong,” Archie cried, “delivery!”   
When he came to the hostel with slips of paper, he didn’t have a greeting at all. When he came to the pub with a poster, he’d found the doorbells. When he came to the farmer’s market with a label-maker, he cut it to ‘delivery.’ And when he came to Daffodil Elementary School...it finally felt  _ natural _ . (If he said it in a sing-song voice.)   
A woman in a sparkly dress came to the sliding doors and opened them for him -    
“‘Allo!”   
“Ah, hello there.”   
Inside was a small but well-furnished hall, with golden-yellow carpet on the floor and class pictures hung on the walls - and a poster for holiday-time childcare. Out the windows he could see prefab classrooms strewn in the courtyard, and see-saws plastered in snow. He would’ve said it was beautiful, but he’d only just walked in. That - and Archie could finally wipe the slush off his boots, breathe in the warm air.    
“I’m Ms Ramirez, and you are...Archie, isn’t it?”

  
In fact, Archie  _ definitely _ felt too warm now.   
“Uh - yeah,” he said sheepishly, “were you…”   
“Mmhm. I was there at the PokeCenter,” Ramirez explained, smiling with crow’s feet ‘round her eyes as she led Archie over to Room One, “...I hope everything’s going at least a little bit better for you and the others now?”   
“My friend’s still, uh - recovering from the frostbite,” Archie whispered, seeing the group of kids in the room, “but other than that...yeah, it’s going!”   
“Well, wish them well for me.” All the attendees looked up from their colouring books, and tried their best to eavesdrop on the grown-ups.   
  
“Alright,” he listed loud and clear, unpacking his backpack on the floor of the classroom, “we have...paper! We have cotton balls, great for snow - pipe cleaners, some toothpicks,” the continued, seeing his delivery get snatched up, “some - glue? That’ll be glitter glue.”   
“Thanks!”   
“It’s not  _ glittery _ enough.”   
“So,” he wondered, on his way out, “what’cha makin?”   
“Snowflakes,” said a kid in a scarf, picking up a piece of paper and scissors, “it’s when you fold this up, then you cut it along the edges and it’s all symmetrical.”   
“Geometry’s  _ cool _ .”   
  
“Psst,” another girl with curly hair whispered, “I think that’s the guy  _ Dad _ rescued.”   
“In the blizzard?” asked the kid with the glasses.   
“Yeah,” said her brother, cutting paper, “he  _ died! _ ”

  
Ms. Ramirez looked at Archie. Archie looked at her. He had a face that should’ve said  _ kids are amazing _ , but eyes that said  _ these kids terrify me, the feeling is probably mutual, and I really, really shouldn’t be here. _   
“Now, now,” she scolded, “Olive, Shawn. We don’t  _ gossip _ in this classroom.”   
“Oh, nah,” Archie corrected, getting up off the floor and waving his hands, “I wouldn’t say it’s gossip,” he continued, opening the door, “gossip’s generally not  _ true  _ and it’s generally hurtful, but...you know, I’m not hurt,” he explained, backing out into the snow, “by - dying, I mean.  _ Aaaany-way _ , have fun!”   
And then - he was gone.   
  
“Er - yes,” Ms. Ramirez whispered, too late to wave him off, “but also, Shawn.”   
“Yeah, miss?”   
“I believe he was in a  _ coma _ , not...dead. I wouldn’t mix the two.”

* * *

  
“Are you two planning to buy more?” the crotchety old man behind the counter asked loudly.   
“Or are you - how do you say,  _ browsing _ ,” said the crotchety old woman.   
  
When Tabitha and Matt jumped to attention, mitts all over a velvet ottoman and their fingerprints covering every table in the row, she’d stopped staring.

“Yep!” Matt replied with his best polite smile. (His partner squinted.)   
They had asked; and the lady at the counter said they had a cheap cabinet - carved, polished, just not stuck together, the most cabinet-y cabinet you could buy. Come back in an hour, she said, and yet they were still here. Fussing.   
The wares of Volkov’s Furniture store were both so well-crafted that Tabitha spent an age extolling how pretty he would find them - _ keyword, he, said Matt _ \- and yet just dissatisfactory enough that Matt always, always found a reason why the next one was definitely nicer.   
Oh,  _ that _ one can fit more in it.  _ That _ one was a bit more compact. 

  
“I mean, the balsawood looks nice,” Matt wondered aloud, “but...thing is, if Shelly’s Walrein starts, uh -  _ teething _ on it?” He sucked in a breath through his teeth.   
“Wait, does it still do that?”   
“If it’s stressed? So, yeah? That’s what she told me - ”   
With that Tabitha slapped a hand down on the little cabinet - with a bang.   
“ _ You’re _ stressed,” he declared, pointing a finger.   
“...Wha?”

Tabitha’s mouth hung open a tiny bit. It slowly ticked through his head what he’d  _ actually _ said and how this little shop apparently had an echo. (The old man behind the counter sighed and left the room, much to the annoyance of his wife.)   
“If Shelly wanted to make sure we picked the right table, she’d have  _ come _ ,” Tabitha explained, motioning out the frosty window in the vague direction of his flat.   
“ _ Exactly! _ ” Matt called -    
“ _ So _ ,” he finished, pointing at the tacky purple couch, “she trusts you.”   
“Ah. Okay, I see.”   
At that, something  _ left _ Matt. He looked over at Tabitha, tailing him as he wandered to find a place to sit down, by the window and the sun...and turned away before they could notice. (They would probably need to be seated for this.)   
“See, uh. The thing is - like, she offered to come, but then I thought I should tell her she shouldn’t have to come,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck, “and she was...relieved.” For a moment, he looked a tiny bit proud of himself. Either that, or her.   
“You think so?”   
“I mean, think about it. S’ the first time in a month I’ve...actually done something for  _ me _ , not - all of us,” Matt kept explaining in hushed tones, pulling Tabitha quite close, “It’s the same for you and her, right? ”   
“Has she - “   
“Yeah, she’s told me.”   
The shop-owners had long since disappeared. Matt gulped.   
“...Said that if  _ she _ had her way, we would’ve just stopped in Johto. Either that or - or we wouldn’t even have needed to leave in the first place. She would’ve said this was, uh... bullshit, we can’t run forever. And that’d be that.”   
And then, he thought about it just a little bit more.   
“But I...think she knows why that didn’t work.”   
  
He wished he could’ve described the moment in detail when Shelly walked into the Seafloor Cave, stony-faced, speech prepared, while his - his bro, he wanted to say, had the orb and the upper hand and nothing to lose. But all he knew was second-hand from the person who’d been brave enough to actually go down there.   
He didn’t even see Kyogre wake up.   
  
“I just wanna fix that, man.”   
Tabitha recoiled - “But - that’s just  _ hindsight _ , you know that,” he tried to reassure him, “We - “   
“I know, Tabi, I know.”   
Matt took a deep breath and snapped out of it. For a moment he thought he should’ve looked at Tabitha with fresh eyes now. Maybe as he was the first time they met, or the ideal first time they met, when he wasn’t...so angry. Not at him, but still. The ‘Makuhita’ man.    
  


“I’m sorry, I can’t - quite say it right,” he finally admitted, pulling away again, “I just thought, why don’t I try and make it so we’re not joined at the hip all the time? That’s gotta count for something.”   
“Yeah, I - I see that.”    
“Baby steps, right?...”   
Silently, Tabitha tried to cross his hands over Matt’s. (His were tiny.)   
Well, until they heard a gentle tinkling noise, of the back door opening and the shopkeeper coming back. The pair decided it was time for them to leave. Walls were thin here. The doors were left open just wide enough for the second half of that conversation to slip through.   
“Of course.”   
And word spread quickly here.   
  
“You wanna go get lunch?” he asked, as they wandered aimlessly away from Volkov’s Furniture through the snow, “You know, until we can pick up the cabinet? I saw this reaaally cute bakery up the stairs.”   
“Ah. Yeah. Good idea,” Tabitha answered, looking up the hill.   
...He’d been walking on the slightly slippery, crushed snow that you only get when someone big left a footprint in it. A little pit in his stomach opened. Maybe lunch would help.   
  
“Matt,” he asked, blankly, “don’t take this the wrong way, but - if that’s what you wanted to do from now on, why’d you invite me along?...”   
Matt just kept walking.   
“Oh, I don’t - “ he stuttered as he did, “I don’t... _ think _ I feel the same way she does. About this.”   
“You make a good point, though.”

“...Do I?”   
  


* * *

  
What was the expiry date, of the novelty of near-death from hypothermia?   
The last stop for Archie, the almost-died postman, was a quaint little furniture store owned by the Volkovs, presumably. A slapped-together, brick-wall, corrugated iron roof sort of building with lumber sitting under tarpaulins - if you looked in the window, you could see a Smeargle in a workshop, painting varnish onto wood.    
So...Archie decided to plant himself on the icy, pine-needled ground just across from them instead, in case he knocked anything over. Just to wait, while he sat very, very still and tricked himself into looking...better. He opened up his backpack well in advance.   
  
He’d left the school with jitters. Dry mouth. Shivering. Excitement? The clouds he made when he breathed were bigger than his head. He’d cope, he’d certainly been through worse. 

Kids were weird - remember May? And it was still true, his feelings weren’t  _ hurt _ by people mentioning the whole...almost freezing to death thing. He looked around the corner at the doorstep he was going to deliver to, and…   
  
_ Well,  _ he thought to himself, _ if you have some kind of flashback when people mention that, then it’s going to suck when the owner of said shop is the one who donated you pyjamas when they found out you were homeless. _ Despite himself he slunk back around the corner - until he couldn’t see Mr. Volkov anymore. (Curse his excellent memory.)   
  
(The door was already shut, Archie thought. Mr. Volkov would have to walk all the way back to the front door.) But he’d probably be really excited to see him. See how he was. He deserved that basic level of respect if he gave Archie something - or was that not how it worked?   
  
(Oh, but did Archie really want to see him? He could certainly act like it. He could just not mention the near dying. In fact, yes, he did want to see him!  _ Anyone! _ )   
Unless of course, you took into account the fact he had explicitly said he was here to get a job. Maxie and Tabitha and Courtney and Lennox and Carolina had all heard him say it and he was a man of his word. He didn’t lie to them, did he?  _ Did he? _ No, he didn’t.   
(Ah, he restated, taking the bottle he was meant to deliver out of his bag, but that was just making connections. In fact, he was already halfway there. Half the village knew his name, nursed him back to health, embraced him in fluffy blankets.)    
  
So he  _ admitted _ that he was, on some level, trying to use that exemplary act of human kindness to get a job.   
  
_ Okay, you know what, _ he said to himself, as he walked around the side of the store, ducking just under the windows,  _ never mind that.  _ It was probably a much better idea that he  _ didn’t _ have a chit-chat with Mr. Volkov about the delivery and the inevitable Everything Else, just to err on the side of caution. One less person for him to talk to was perfectly fine.    
  
So he very quickly poked the bottleful of glitter glue through the mail slot on the door, and ran.

* * *

  
Back in Room One of the Boulderroll Hostel, the situation had escalated from heated discussion to all out war.    
On the one side, you had the backpackers.

  
“No, you cannot catch it by  _ definition _ ,” said one, “it is the Original One!”   
“Yeah,” sneered a voice, “it catches you!”   
“I know this is an unpopular opinion,” said another, “but the mountain should’ve been closed from day one; it’s just not our place and we have to respect that. It’s that simple.”

On the other side, you had the hikers.

  
“Okay, but what about the people who actually mapped it?” one argued, “Climbed it?”   
“Are we just going to devalue all of their sacrifices like that?”   
“People  _ died _ !” someone screamed, “It’s an insult!”   
“What I  _ said _ ,” the backpacker explained, “is it’s not our place.”   
“ _ People! Died! _ ” the someone screamed louder.   
“Actually, you know what?” said a grizzled old man in the back, “It is our place!  _ It is! _ Pokemon and humans  _ shouldn’t be separated! _ Ever! Are we not Sinnohan?”   
“Yeah, be respectful!”   
Maybe saying there were two sides might be a bit inaccurate.   
“You wanna catch the Pokemon, huh?”

“No, not if you close it!”   
“So otherwise,  _ you would do it?! _ ”   
“I - no, you shut up!  _ Everybody shut up! _ ”   
“This man wants to catch Arceus!”   
  
The original one - the original one that wanted to catch Arceus, rather - was gone. Courtney had taken a little break to use the hostel’s phone line, taking the time when no-one answered to press her ear against the wall and hear what she had done.   
She liked it. But not enough to stay much longer than this.

...Either her family were sleeping in late for the wintertime, or someone got to them first.   
  


* * *

“You know, I  _ like _ knowing where my cabinets come from,” Tabitha commented, heaving the freshly-made furniture up over his head.   
“Y’ say that like there’s, like. Illegal dark web cabinets,” Matt asked, taking most of the weight, “Alright, take it slow down the steps here - “

From up the side of the hill, and at the first step of the long, slippery flight downward, the mist had burned off enough so they could spy a tall, wooden, old block of flats, with a bright red roof. They’d been tottering downhill with too-smooth wood balanced on their heads - baby steps, said Matt, baby steps - and they’d plenty of time to look down on it after a . It being...home.    
(Ah, Tabitha hoped he was proud of it.)   
  
A pair of windows lit up from the inside of it - not theirs, though.    
“Everything looks so... _ nice _ here,” Tabitha said aloud, in a sigh, “Have I said that?”   
“Yeah, bro, it  _ sparkles _ ,” Matt agreed, looking around and suddenly feeling a bit of warmth come back to his face. Then he looked a little ways behind him -    
And he noticed that the leg of their cabinet...also sparkled.

* * *

  
What a productive day he had had.   
Archie pulled his hand away from Alistair’s door handle. He supposed he should consider himself a good flatmate that his mate hadn’t locked the door as he slept, he thought, wandering into his and not considering that he could lock his door too. Alistair’s Furret nipped at his feet. Jumped on his chest a couple of times. But...it lost interest.   
  
Fair enough, he thought, the sweet thing didn’t actually know what he’d been doing; only that he came in cold and it was trained as a warming pet. He would’ve told it that he’d had truly, the most productive day, he’d met so many wonderful people, made so many connections, and he felt wonderful too.    
He would’ve... _ really _ liked to do that, actually. Maybe with a person and not a Pokemon. At the very least, he didn’t believe in talking at creatures. Maybe Carolina. She’d probably press him as to how it went, and -    
...Did he or did he not want to?   
  
Instead, Archie lay down in the center of his room, and listened to the creak of mattress springs. That bottle of water by his bed didn’t have much left in it. His head rolled to the side. 

The sun from the window behind him only came up to where his backpack sat on the floor. 

Very dim.    
It was two in the afternoon, and Archie considered the day over.   
  


* * *

“ _ Bruh _ ,” Matt pointed out, “I think this thing’s stuck together with glitter glue.”   
Tabitha turned around - “Ex-cuse me?!” The table listed down -    
“Don’t stop moving, it’ll fall!”   
“It is?” they muttered under their breath, looking at the leg of the cabinet, “oh  _ fuck me _ , it is _. _ ”   
“But, like, it’s not that obvious, is it?”   
Tabitha squinted at it. “Well,  _ no _ ... “ ( _ He _ hadn’t noticed immediately, for a start.)

“Besides, it’s glitter glue, it doesn’t look bad,” Matt continued, jogging forward with the cabinet above his head, “and, like...do we really wanna go back up those stairs right now - “   
“Oh, no. We don’t.”   
  


* * *

But then, as Archie reached over to get another sip of water for his dry mouth, he - noticed something on the inside of his thumb, that stuck to the plastic bottle. ...Probably the glue he just delivered. So he moved his hand into the patch of light to get a look -    
It glittered.   
  
“Wh…”   
And then. He  _ remembered _ .   
  


* * *

  
“And...Shelly  _ kind _ of agreed she’d meet me at the stairwell,” Matt admitted, seeing her and their flatmate, waving in the distance from just outside their home. Tabitha nodded, and hurried up. (Except he had to make absolutely sure he didn’t bump the cabinet leg.)

  
“Who are they?” Annie asked, seeing a new guy carrying the cabinet from the front.   
“Oh, you know,” Shelly told her, “bros.”   
“Bros?” (Did people say that in the southern hemisphere?) “Ohhh, like. Frat bros?”   
“Eh. Sure.”

  
“How’s this looking for storage?” Matt called out to her, waltzing up the driveway with a shiny new cabinet with Tabitha in tow. He looked up the stairwell to their flat and winced a little, but Shelly was already moving in to stand beside him.   
“It’s looking really nice, actually. Thanks for handling this,” she told him with a smile, “Alright, everyone, take a leg, and go!”   
  


* * *

  
Turned out Archie’s day wasn’t actually over. He traced the orders back, remembered the odd shape of the bottle as he shoved it through the mail-hole. The cute winter papercraft glitter glue had gone to the nine-till-five furniture seller and the heavy-duty wood glue had gone to the kids. He was absolutely sure of it. And he had the whole evening to fix it. But who was he supposed to tell first and how? (Then again. That  _ was _ his area.)   
  
First things first, he got out of his room. Too focused on this to avoid the creaky floorboards, he found the computer in the living room, hibernating but still logged in. He pulled back the chair. Fished the phone out of his pocket. And put his head  _ down _ .   
  
Come on, come on - think. Be brave. You know what’s going to happen immediately, as in right this second while you’re sitting here? The furniture store - well, you have no idea, you don’t make furniture. The school? Kids were disappointed. They’d probably get annoyed at the teacher or else just think they weren’t doing it right.   
  
...So that was that. In the search bar he looked up - what was it, Dandelion Primary?  _ Daffodil _ Primary - lovely name. Their website had a phone number, he dialed. And while he focused on the dial tone and the sound of trampling feet outside, he prepared to tell the truth.   
  


* * *

  
“Careful,” Tabitha told Annie, seeing the table tilt a little to the left, “don’t bang on the pipes - “   
“I’m trying, one of you’s not  _ going _ fast enough…”   
“No, you’re bending your knees too much - “   
“Yeah, you’re arguing!” said Shelly, “S’ probably you!”   
“Hey,” Matt ordered, “keep it down…”   
They were going by the window of the guy that lived below them...and Matt didn’t want to make the neighbours angry.

* * *

  
“Hello,” said the familiar voice on the other end of the line, “this is Daffodil Primary School, how can I help you?”   
Deep breaths, Archie. Deep breaths.   
“Hey, it’s Archie.”   
Don’t tell her any unnecessary information.   
“I’ve...just realised I might’ve made a mistake with the delivery,” he explained calmly, “I think I gave you some wood glue instead of the glitter glue.”   
Not  _ ‘I might’ve screwed up the delivery,’ _ not  _ ‘the glitter glue you really needed.’ _   
“ _ Ahhhh _ ,” Ms. Ramirez replied, “Ah, I see.”   
“Yeah. But - that’s okay.”   
“To be honest, I forgot I’d asked Carolina for the glitter glue?” Archie heard a crackly laugh from the other end, and a little smile formed on his face.   
“Oh! Well, uh - that’s okay,” he replied, leaning up against the window, “still, I thought I’d let you know, just in case it was a bit too late in the day for me to come by again. In that case, I’ll be coming back there in about...half an hour so we can - “   
  


* * *

  
Then the top of the cabinet bumped the pipe - clang! - Tabitha winced, Matt grimaced and...the cabinet suddenly felt lighter.   
In slow motion, the top panel of the cabinet detached from the rest of the wood, with a quick and quiet grating sound, school-grade glitter glue trailing from the bottom...and it shot, on a perfect downward trajectory, down the stairs and to the window.   
The rest of the cabinet eagerly followed along with it.    
  


* * *

  
Ms. Ramirez heard an extremely loud  _ crash _ .   
“ **_Fuck! -_ ** ”   
When Archie finally dared open one eye, he was clinging to the back of his office chair for dear life. Showered in the shards of what was once the living room window. And the corner of a large wooden panel just pricking his nose. Nobody spoke. Not even Tabitha, Shelly, and Matt - who were standing on the stairwell outside, looking very, very guilty.   
“You alright there?” said the kindly voice on the other end.   
  
“Ah, I’m fine,” Archie squeaked, “I was - just about to go out anyway.”   
  


* * *

  
Maxie’s schedule was very, very precise when he was in here. (Before, it could be summed up as get up and drive. Before he lost the getaway van, at least.)   
At nine in the morning Ethel woke him up and helped him with breakfast. At eleven in the morning, more or less was the daily video call. At noon they served lunch. From one till four was the physical therapy, the dexterity tests, dipping his hands and feet into bowls of beads - he’d moved on from rice - and measuring on a scale of one to ten how much it still hurt.    
  
(From four till five he was left alone.)   
At five they talked him through different power wheelchair models while they helped him with a bath, and dinner. But at six -    
Maxie’s old tablet lit up.    
“Aidino,” he said into its microphone, “open texts.”   
  


[ Archie:  _ so um _ ]   
[ Archie:  _ this happened??? _ ]   
Maxie’s heart stopped; below they’d sent an image of a shattered front-room window, with glass scattered all over the nice carpet. “My word, did somebody break in?” he spoke aloud - 

[ Maxie:  _ My word did somebody break in _ ]   
[ Archie:  _ NOPE. it’s actually kind of funny how it happened i’ll tell you _ ]   
(He quite liked the newfangled text-to-speech. As much as he imagined it made him sound like he’d finally lost his mind - or more of it, it was better than truly talking to himself.)   
  
[ Archie:  _ still alistair says it’s probably going to cost upwards of 40,000 pokedollars to fix it and it’ll probably be really cold in here tonight so that’s :( _ ]   
“Well, if you end up in here too,” he gasped, “don’t say I didn’t  _ warn _ you.”   
[ Archie:  _ hey hey it’s okay i put duck tape on it _ ]   
[ Archie:  _ Anyway, I’m really really really sorry that I couldn’t come and visit you irl today. I know we haven’t gotten a chance to in a little while and...I hope you’re doing okay? _ ]   
Maxie froze.   
“I am doing okay,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice as level as he possibly could, “the nurses say my prognosis is good, and that I am ready to use a wheelchair.”   
He hoped that on the other end, Archie understood what I meant. Saying it aloud made his heart skip.    
  
[ Archie: _ I’m always here if you need someone to talk to  _ ]   
“Your window,” he corrected like a reflex, “is more important!”   
...No response.    
“But do tell me how it broke.”    
[ Archie: _ oh yeah yeah long story, but...I am pretty sure it’s technically my fault and it has to do with arts and crafts _ ]

“Are you - “ Maxie began -

[ Archie:  _ yes i'm serious _ ]

“Delete. Backspace. Delete message - oh, blast it,” he repeated, before Maxie finally decided to leave the half-formed jumble of words unsent, and listened. (His face was beginning to hurt from all the moving about, anyhow.)

He sat up a little in his bed, tugging the blankets tightly around him and settling in for him to be read to. Like an audiobook, but more personal and not listened to already five times. But...as he looked at the screen from a lower angle, he could see several large smears of rainbow pixels; like a digital oil slick. 

[ Archie:  _ so to set the scene, this teacher from the local primary school’s getting these childcare activities set up… _ ]

It had come from his bandaged finger where he’d pressed the button to send. The gauzy fluff had gone damp at the tip of it, with the oil and wetness of a weeping wound on his nose and cheek. (Except there weren’t supposed to be any open wounds to  _ weep _ . No broken skin. No open blisters. Nothing that hurt.) 

[ Archie:  _ and they needed glitter glue _ ]   
  


Calmly, Maxie tried to wipe off the stain before it distracted him anymore. 

Then, with a shaking hand, he pulled the bandages back down, just until they covered up his scratched and open sores again. (They never fit quite as well if he moved them himself.)

[ Archie:  _ and the furniture seller needs some wood glue because stock ran out  _ ]

(There, now he wouldn’t be tempted. Nasty habit. If Archie were here, they’d scold him.)

[ Archie: _ ...you may be able to see where this is going  _ ]

Maxie only hoped their story was long enough to lull him asleep.


End file.
